Blake, are there any past posts on here about handicapping? If there is, I haven't found it yet. My question would be simply, how do you calculate a handicap? I've sort of introduced DG to my small town and now there are others playing (awesome!) but frankly, I'm way ahead of them and playing against them is alright, but they won't be able to beat me for another year or so. And lots of women are interested around here. I think a handicap would be the answer.

Whenever I play with a friend in the legends division (60 years old+?) over time we've noticed we're about 16 strokes apart, so we always subtract 16 from his score every round. It makes it competetive, yet recreational and interesting.

All we have around here is doubles leagues. So I've been thinking of starting up a singles league that would require handicapping. In talking to others, the consensus seems to be to take the average of the last 3 rounds at the league course and deduct from par. Anyone is welcome to play as scratch any time. The suggestion was made to play 2 rounds the first day and 2 the second day to achieve a handicapped round on the second meeting of the league. As far as will that handicap translate to other courses, I don't know. I do know a lot of people have shown interest as there's A LOT of doubles around here. Any input anyone has to this would be great. When playing for money, on the other hand, take as many strokes handicap as you can get out of the other guy.

there are none here, but there are some on the pdga.com and i believe discgolfunited.com was working on one as well.

basically, the easiest way would be to look at tournament results for a given course (or do your best to estimate).

it will take a few rounds of everyone playing to really get a feel for it. you can calculate virtual ratings and use that to develop score handicapping.

basically... to estimate an ssa without previous tournament results...

take every hole that someone who could throw an accurate 500' could realistically deuce (within reason, hitting a 2' wide gap at the 475' mark is not realistic) with a great drive.
multiply the count by 0.6

take every hole that has a reasonably large amount of trouble. that is, if you miss the fairway (target landing zone, ~15' of width), your chances of bogey are 50/50 with your chances of birdie nearly nil.
multiply the count by 0.2

take every hole that is not reachable in 2 perfect 350' drives to get yourself a 50' putt. basically zig zag holes and holes beyond 750' (but below 1100', make sure to compensate for downhill).

to make it easier just assume that 1 stroke = 10 rating points (in actuality, every stroke on either side of SSA changes the value of a stroke by about 0.3 points, but it's not worth over complicating it).

the hard part is actually getting the data to get handicapping. the easiest way is to work from previous league results or to set up a week or two where every night people can play an "official" round for free and turn in a scorecard. i would say a minimum of 4 rounds are needed to calculate a rating.

once ratings are calculated use ratings to handicap, 10 points = 1 stroke.

once your league is up and running i would suggest updating ratings at least once a month (or every 4 calculated rounds per player) as some players will be rapidly improving. this could be done after every round even once there is sufficient data.

I'm in weekly singles leagues every wednesday here in cincinnati. We use a system similar to how blake was explaining it. It requires a course correction which might be the biggest problem. Anyways, the program pretty much does all the calculations by itself, u just have to enter what everyone shot that day into a column, and it does the rest. It's laid out in a spreadsheet using excel, and I could probably get a copy of the program if you'd like. We've been using the same program for about 8 years now, and it works well to balance the playing field. Let me know, I might be able to get it by Friday if you need me to.

Practice, practice, practice. Especially with players that are better than you. It's one of the only ways to learn new things.

Here In Rochester we have a handicapp leage also. Im not sure the math behind it, but the first 4 rounds or so decided the handicapps. Im not sure if your handicapp changes thoughout the leage as well, but i like the idea behind it. It gives people like me a chance to beat Open players. Its more like competing wit yourself than other players though, so its a different type of competition all together.